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Critical aspects of this project are (i) its contribution to our understanding of building and nonstructural component and system behavior through full-scale system-level tests, (ii) its contributions to our understanding of the use of protective systems in concert with nonstructural components to minimize seismic-induced damage and (iii) its ability to serve as an attractor to earthquake engineering careers because of the unique nature of the experiment itself. However, these contributions are only valuable if the results can be widely distributed via education and outreach activities. The project’s unique potential to excite young people and interest them in earthquake engineering can only be realized if they are made aware of it. Similarly, its ability to improve practice can only be realized if practitioners are informed of the project and its implications for their work. Accordingly, the project will produce education and outreach materials and experiences targeting a range of people and communication strategies.
High School Student Initiatives
Proposed educational activities are designed to infuse the research activity into secondary school curricula where the opportunity to attract new generations of earthquake engineers will be exploited. A partnership with the Stanley E. Foster Construction Tech Academy (CTA) will be incorporated into this effort. The CTA, a unit within the San Diego City Schools, opened in 2002 as a magnet campus for students interested in engineering, architecture, and construction. CTA’s student body is non-traditional for science and engineering, with an 89% non-white-male population. The CTA approach to education relies on a cross-curricular setting in which students work together to solve real-life pre-engineering and engineering problems that are present in both the local and global arenas. The project-based curriculum is used to integrate all subject matter, as well as prepare students for further education or a professional path upon graduation, but is clearly ideally suited for integration with this project.
An objective of the educational program of this project is to provide a relevant earthquake engineering experience to students at CTA, and develop curriculum modules for deployment at other secondary schools. CTA teachers (pre-engineering and visualization) will be engaged in the research to develop the curriculum modules for secondary education. Educational modules will be developed with the participation of project researchers and incorporating project results that explain the seismic response of structures, nonstructural and protective systems, and (perhaps most importantly) the research process. A culminating exercise that abstracts key learning points to a richly illustrated predictive exercise will be designed. Completed curriculum modules will include classroom materials, background for laddering student learning via web/handout, scripted in-class exercises, homework assignments/solutions, and an annotated teacher’s manual. Teachers participating in developing curriculum modules with UCSD and SDSU faculty researchers will integrate CTA students into the research in real time.
Undergraduate Student Initiatives
This project will provide unique and stimulating theortetical and experimental research experiences in an exciting field to underrepresented undegraduate students from Howard University. Howard University is a historically-black University, as defined in Section 322(2) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 20 U.S.C. 1061(2). The proposed activities will provide these students opportunities to correlate the mathematical idealization with the real behavior of structures under earthquake loading. This will no doubt have the effect of influencing and encouraging students to participate in research or to pursue graduate studies in structural engineering. We will request Research Experience for Undergraduates (NEES-REU) supplemental funding of NSF for this aspect of the project. Further, materials to be developed from the process of the construction process will be disseminated to construction engineering settings (see Construction Management).
Technology Transfer Initiatives
As our research program advances, a series of workshops and seminars will be offered to the practicing engineering community on the fundamentals of earthquake resistant design from a performance-based perspective, emphasizing the NCS and protective measures. Participating universities have continuing education programs and CEU’s will be offered to practicing engineers who attend. This will include a summer institute at one of the core universities for current and future engineering faculty to provide them the basic tools for teaching and researching performance-based earthquake design of buildings. Where appropriate, we will engage and partner with professional organizations (ASCE-SEI, etc.) in these outreach activities. Finally, a capstone outreach activity of our work is the multi-disciplinary blind prediction workshop planned during year 3. The objective of this workshop is to bring relevant communities together for the purposes of assessing the capabilities of existing modeling methodologies (simplified approaches, numerical (e.g. FEM), and analytical) in predicting the building, NCS, and protective systems response to seismic excitations. The blind prediction contests of the 7-story building tested at UCSD and the 6-story steel building recently tested in Japan have shown the great need to undertake them. Both contests attracted the active participation of local and overseas researchers, practicing engineers and students, and allowed assessment of the predictive capabilities and shortcomings of existing and new analytical tools.
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